


inlet

by cptsuke



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Gen, Magical Realism, Off screen child death, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 15:55:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20312119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: pope loves his brother, even though hes the only one who knows where Smurf found him





	inlet

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like an hour directly after telling my friend that i dont write aus but if i did deran would be a selkie that smurf stole from the sea

Pope tries to not remember the boy before, his eyes a different blue, not constantly shifting like the ocean, the Deran that Smurf didn’t take from the sea.

He'd been a cute kid, barely walking but into everything til the day he was out of sight for the barest of moments and then he was gone, drowned in the ocean.

Smurf had carried her dead child, held by magics in the sleeping state of newly dead, to forever stay the same as his moment of death but never to be alive again, she’d taken him to the sea that took him and Pope had followed terrified that that she would give herself to the ocean, to go where her youngest had been lost.

But.

She hadn’t.

She'd gone into the waist deep swell, dipped the child’s body beneath the dashing waves and for the briefest moment Pope had thought maybe this was a goodbye, some sort of symbolic changing of the guard, returning the body to that which had taken it. But Pope's mother was not the sentimental sort of woman, no one, no thing took from her, and as the body of his little brother disappeared beneath the waves, Smurf's voice raised in a song that no human voice should be able to sing. The waves swelled and before Pope could fear for his mother her arms raised above the water and the sea flattened to a dead calm.

And someone cried.

Screamed.

A squalling cry of a child suddenly adrift.

In Smurf's arms lay a small child roughly the same size, shape and look of the one she’d let sink beneath the surface. But this one was wrapped in a fur blanket, crying and kicking like Pope's dead brother would never do again. Smurf returned from the sea, the babe held firmly in arm no matter how much he seems to reach for the water.

_This is your brother now Andrew_ she said in a tone that meant it was true and he had no choice but to accept it as a Truth. Pope watched her walk her way back to their home, with a wary glance to the sea he cursed himself for not realizing you couldn’t take something from Smurf without her taking her own pound of flesh back.

Pope thinks he's the only remembers. By the time Baz had arrived several years later, carrying a blood debt he couldn’t feel but would never be able to repay, the new Deran had become the only Deran, and no one ever mentioned the dark times between Deran's disappearance and reappearance.

Maybe he’s the only one allowed to remember, Smurf could twist the truth, perception and reality to the point where it no longer meant anything but what she said it meant. So maybe him knowing is a punishment, or, he thinks, sometimes when he sees her set Craig on Deran, when he gets to see the aftermath of the two of them sitting very close, bloody noses and tear stained cheeks somehow pullng the two of them closer no matter how Smurf tried to cause rifts in any alliance that wasn’t her own, maybe if it's a punishment, it's not one for him.

  


The kid with the changes like the sea eyes grows up, toddles around behind his brothers when Smurfs lets him free of her arms til one day he follows Craig all the way across the strand and into the ocean, Craig takes his shadow in stride and throws him on a board in whats probably supposed to be a fun hazing but turns into him coming home Deran perched on his shoulders, crowing loudly and proudly about the epic surfer his little bro is gonna be.

Smurf nearly kills them all with the screech she lets out. She calms eventually, even if they all feel the effects of her displeasure for months later. But the damage is done, every time Deran isn't tied down by Smurf's attentions or chores or jobs he’s in the water chasing something. Pope feels almost sorry for him, as much his little brother as the one he’d lost, with no idea why his skin didn’t fit right, why the water calmed him when nothing else would.

He meets Adrian at the beach. Pope thinks sometimes they wouldn’t have bonded so if they’d met anywhere else, but maybe they would have, Adrian spent as much time as Deran in the water, lacking in magic but more canny than a kid had any right to be when it came to dealing with a Cody kid.

  


Pope only gets close to telling the truth once, he's angry and hurting and Deran's sulking mood is his last straw. He wants someone to hurt like him.

“You cried yourself to sleep every night til Smurf messed with your head again, your father didn’t even stay to see you born, Smurf may as well have found you abandoned in the sea,” He can see Smurf's fingers shift across her rings, knows she’s ready to shut him up if he goes too far. But he doesn't need to, Deran's gone quiet though the storm behind his eyes rages, it's less anger and more hurt now, he'll be by the water before long and Pope tries not to feel too manipulative. The house is oppressive with secrets and shame, it's a bitter favor he's giving his little brother, making him run off to the only thing that gives him comfort these days.

  


When it ends, before Snurf goes and tries to end them all in a blaze of glory, she burns the fur blanket he'd come wrapped in. Pope knows its wrong, knows whatever magic the kid had was tied to it, and knows its destruction means something taken that can't be given back.

But Smurf underestimates her youngest. Her stolen baby boy. Because he doesn't remember the sea, doesn't remember where he came from or who he was taken from. What she's taken from him has no hold without the memories she spent years blocking and warping.

He has his family, a brother that trusts him more than any other, another brother that will come when he's in need, and a boy that's practically the ocean incarnate living with him in a home of his own making.

Deran doesn't know he came from the sea, he probably never will, and Pope doesn't think he will ever tell him.

  



End file.
